


The Spider

by Amalveor



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: BAMF Mrs. Hudson, Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Gen, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-11-08 06:19:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17976068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amalveor/pseuds/Amalveor
Summary: Another fic written for a prompt on the kink meme years ago.The prompt asked for a terrified Sherlock begging John to kill a spider for him.





	The Spider

He sighed and flicked the corner of the paying-in slip he held, wondering for what was not the first time that day why Sherlock couldn’t do his own bloody banking. Or shopping, or cleaning for that matter, or anything at all reasonably normal. How on earth he had managed to survive before John turned up he would never know, although he supposed Mycroft had probably had a lot to do with it. Genius though he was, he practically needed a minder to manage everyday tasks. He sighed again, because there was little else to do and tried to work out how small a distance he’d moved in the long ten minutes he‘d been waiting.

The woman directly in front of him tutted and rearranged her handbag on her shoulder. Designer, he noticed, imagining Sherlock observing the woman. Her coat looked to be good quality, as was her watch so she clearly cared about her appearance and yet, there was a splatter of mud on the bottom of her right trouser leg. Dried mud. He looked around at the door- it wasn’t raining today so it must have been from yesterday. She cared about her appearance but hadn’t changed her muddy trousers since yesterday because… He had to bat away the theory that she was having an affair with a farmer several times before he realised that, clearly, he had no idea. Which was why Sherlock was the detective, and he was the dogsbody who did his banking. Clearly.

He jumped as his phone vibrated in his pocket, suddenly self-conscious, as though he might have been caught playing detective. Because, of course the message was from Sherlock. It was too early for his sister to be texting him and, well, he didn’t often get messages from anyone else these days. Probably another bizarre shopping list, he thought, pulling the phone from his pocket.

COME HOME. NEED HELP QUICKLY. URGET SH

John knew full well that Sherlock’s messages needed to be taken with a pinch of salt. The man would say dangerous or urgent when all he wanted was someone to come home and pay attention to his complaints about being bored. The queue shuffled forward and he followed, about to pocket his phone again, when something struck him. He glanced back to the message. Sherlock has misspelled urgent. A typing mistake. The most precise person he knew had missed a whole letter and that detail told him far more than the message. Sherlock was in trouble. 

His body sprang to action, the implications of this reaching his limbs before they reached his conscious thoughts. He was out the door and sprinting in a second, knocking against those who had stood behind him and not stopping to apologise; running in the way he only did with Sherlock, his bad leg drunk to painlessness with adrenaline.

Not far from home. Quicker to run than find a cab. Quicker still if only those crowding the pavements would move out of his way. He kept his eyes to the ground, tarmac hard and stinging through the soles of his shoes. He imagined Sherlock; texting with one hand, sword fighting with the other. Tied up and injured. Incapacitated by some terrible poison. A few minutes only to Baker Street, but the burn in his chest and the worry in his mind drew them out.

He thrust his key into the lock and threw himself at the door, not stopping to retrieve it. Bounding up the seventeen steps, hearing but ignoring a shout from Mrs Hudson, approaching the door to the flat. He paused, despite his urgency, telling himself it was to listen for noise as an indication of danger and not to brace himself for what he might find.

There was nothing, not a sound from within the other room. He tried to remember where his handgun might be. Sherlock had had it a few days ago, so it could have ended up anywhere. Damn. He wondered how he would possibly defend himself against the many possible enemies his mind was conjuring into being beyond the door, but he had used all his delaying tactics and there was really little he could do but open the door, to face whatever was behind.

The military part of his mind had registered the gun, its target and was planning the best way to disarm his opponent at around the time his conscious mind became aware that he had opened the door and suggested he might like to take a look around. He looked.

There was a gun. A loaded gun. The target near the ground just over to his right. His muscles tensed, military mind about to launch his body towards the armed man before his conscious mind caught up and stopped it. Sherlock. Sherlock was holding the gun. John’s gun. Pointing it. Shaking. He’d never seen Sherlock shake before.

He didn’t dare to speak and instead, looked quickly and cautiously round to look for obvious signs of danger. Seeing none he lowered his eyebrows at Sherlock in a questioning frown.

“Over there,” the other man said quickly. He sounded odd, a slight throaty waver to his voice. He pointed with the gun, cocking it towards where John stood in a way that made him flinch.

He turned cautiously, but still could see no sign of a threat or intruder. He looked back at Sherlock, crouched up on the sofa, his curly hair flopping untidily to one side and shirtsleeves rolled unevenly up his arms, and started to think that perhaps he had got bored enough to start experimenting with hallucinogenics.

“Sherlock,” he said, unintentionally speaking slowly and unable to keep the smallest amount of amusement from his voice “I think you should probably put the gun down now, don’t you?”

“I’m not high,” Sherlock said, his usual disdainful tone suddenly in place once more. “And I have no intention of being unarmed with that… thing in the room.” His voice wavered a little again.

“What thing, Sherlock?” John asked, “unless you’ve suddenly got something against our bookcase, there’s nothing there.”

Sherlock pulled his face into a sneer that John thought with amusement looked not unlike an expression he had seen Mycroft use once before. He saw the other man visibly tighten his jaw before he said, with some difficulty. “There’s a spider.”

John, expecting anything other than this, couldn’t hold back the burst of laughter that escaped him, although he tried to muffle it as best he could against the palm of his hand.

“Sorry, a what?” He asked, knowing perfectly well already.

Sherlock looked pained. “A spider,” he said again.

“I think you might need to work on your aim before you can to shoot a spider at that distance.”

“My aim,” Sherlock said tightly, “while less practised than yours is no less accurate and I don’t for a second doubt my ability to shoot a non-moving spider. And, if it decides to move, I don’t doubt my ability to shoot you if you don’t kill it for me this minute!”

“Now, now,” John said, holding his hands up in mock surrender. “It’s against my morals to harm any living creature. If it wasn’t, I might have throttled you weeks ago when you ignored the fact that it was your turn to do the shopping for the thousandth time.”

Sherlock looked distinctly unimpressed. “Would you like me to name each and every time I’ve seen you harm a living creature, or would you like me to get on and shoot you?” He asked pleasantly.

“I only kill things that deserve it,” John said, ignoring his threat. “What’s the poor little spider ever done to you?” 

Sherlock jumped, suddenly panicked and tightened his grip on the gun as he apparently spotted the spider behind him. “You shot a man through a window, John- kill the fucking spider!”

His eyes were wide with terror and his grip on the gun seemed unsteady. Despite being unable to stifle another giggle, John took pity. “Alright,” he said patiently. “Where is it?”

Sherlock took one hand off the gun to point a quivering finger towards the bookcase. “It’s under the bookcase. I threw Tomlin’s Compendium of World Pesticides at it, but I missed and inadvertently created it convenient hiding place.”

John saw the large book, propped up where it had fallen, half open against the bottom of the bookshelf, the perfect barricade for a fugitive spider.

Smiling, he made his way across to the bookshelf and dropped to his knees. He reached for the book, intending to move it out of the way, to catch the spider in his hands if he could or use it as a weapon if he couldn’t. He began to lift it and as he did so from behind the book a large, furred, red and black creature the size of his open hand stared back at him. For a second they looked at each other and then, just as John allowed himself to comprehend what he was seeing, the spider took off at a scuttling dash to the other side of the bookcase.

John let go of the book with a cry, letting it fall back to the ground, its whisper thin pages sighing back into place as if they didn’t realise the horror that John had been struck with. Before he could think about it, he was leaping away, moving across the room until he was beside Sherlock on the sofa, safely out of the way of the spider.

“What the hell was that?” He asked. “You didn’t tell me it was a bloody tarantula!”

Sherlock managed a smirk of amusement, although his arms were still shaking. “I thought you might have inferred it from the small cage open in that corner.”

John looked to where Sherlock pointed with the gun and saw with a creeping horror that there was indeed a small tarantula sized cage. He clutched at his legs with his arms, tucking them up onto the sofa as much as possible.

“Sorry, I clearly didn’t spend enough time taking in all the data.” He shot back at Sherlock.

Sherlock tensed beside him and, looking back to the bookcase, John saw that the spider was on the move again. With a movement that was almost alien, the bristles of its legs shining in the light, it scurried across the room, moving closer towards them. It paused on the carpet about three feet from the sofa and John clutched at Sherlock’s arm.

“What are we going to do?” He hissed. “How could you let that go in here?”

“It wasn’t my intention to ‘let it go in here’.” Sherlock bit back, “it escaped.”

“Why did you have the bloody thing in the first place?”

The spider was still in front of them, its legs moving just slightly as if it were considering its would-be-assailants. With every twitch it seemed like it might leap towards them and John closed one eye against the sight, the other squinting to barely open as his grip on Sherlock’s arm tightened.

“Sherlock…” he said, his voice slightly higher than it should be. Sherlock seemed frozen beside him, even the shake of his arms stilled as he watched the spider.

The spider gave a dramatic lurch forward on its haired, twitching limbs and John could stand the sight no longer, clamping his eyes shut.

A thump sounded and John would have jumped from the settee had he not remembered at the last second that it was his only defence from the furred creature below. The noise was quickly followed by another thump and he realised through his fear that someone was knocking on the door. He forced his eyes open to look at Sherlock.

“Mrs Husdon,” Sherlock hissed and John didn’t stop to ask how he knew it was her.

“Tell her to go away,” he said in a whisper.

Sherlock frowned, his brown furrowing in a way it only did when people were being particularly stupid. “But she can kill the spider,” he said.

“Have some pride, Sherlock,” John squeaked, putting a hand to his mouth as he realised how loud he’d been.

“Co-ee,” Mrs Hudson’s voice came from the other side of the door. “Only me, John. You left your keys downstairs. Mustn’t do that. You wait, we’d have squatters in before long. Probably wouldn’t notice them in all your mess, Sherlock.”

“She’s going to come in,” John said, urgently.

“Good!”

“Fine,” John said, but his agreement was lost as Sherlock called out to their landlady.

“Come in, Mrs Hudson,” he boomed.

“Put the gun down,” John warned quickly.

Sherlock looked surprised and John reached for it, to take it from him. Confused, Sherlock held fast and the force of John’s continued movement to grab the gun unsteadied his precarious crouch on the sofa. Unbalanced, both holding the gun- Sherlock trying to keep it near him, John desperately trying to keep it pointed away- they toppled to the floor in a pile of limbs. The gun, thankfully with its safety cap on and not firing at Mrs Hudson, skidded across the ground and disappeared from sight under the sofa. The spider, frightened by the commotion, retreated to its original hiding place under the bookcase as the flat door opened.

“Sherlock,” she said, admonishingly as she dropped the set of keys down onto the coffee table. “You should have told me if I was interrupting something.”

Red faced, John pulled himself off Sherlock as best he could, detangling their arms. “No,” he said, forcefully. “You weren’t. We were just-“

“Hiding from a tarantula,” Sherlock said quickly, his last word muffled as John gave him a thump to the stomach to try and silence him.

John could feel the blush that was already on his cheeks spread hotly to his ears.

“Honestly, boys,” Mrs Hudson said with motherly amusement. “What are you doing with a tarantula? No, don’t tell me,” she said as both John and Sherlock opened their mouths to reply, “an experiment. Fancy being scared of your own experiment Sherlock, dear. I shall have to tell that nice policeman the next time you do something that has him bursting in here complaining.”

“Mrs Hudson, if you tell Lestrade any such thing-”

“Sherlock,” John warned, elbowing him in the ribs. “Any good with spiders, Mrs Hudson?” He asked politely.

“My husband used to keep them,” she said. “Heaven knows why; I’m not sure he was very fond of them himself. Where is the little thing?” She asked, and Sherlock looked baffled by her calmness.

“Under the bookshelf,” he said warily and John watched him eye the sofa as if to establish whether there was enough space for the three of them to huddle together in fear should Mrs Hudson have the same reaction to the appearance of the spider as John.

“Oof,” she said as she knelt in front of the bookshelf, one hand on her bad hip. “My knees are getting far too old for all this running around I have to do after you pair. Where are you then, little one?” She asked as she peered under the bookcase. Apparently identifying the spider she placed her hand palm down on the carpet and reached out to usher it forward. John watched in amazement as a completely docile creature stepped gently onto their landlady’s hand.

“There you are love,” she said soothingly to the spider as she pushed herself gently to standing once more. “Now there, where have you come from?” she asked, walking toward where John and Sherlock were still huddled on the floor by the couch.

Sherlock made a leap for the safety of the sofa as John picked himself off the floor. “The cage…” he said as calmly as he could, gesturing towards the small box on the floor.

Mrs Hudson, calm as anything and carrying the spider like a villain with her faithful familiar placed the creature carefully back into its enclosure.

“Perhaps I should keep him,” she suggested wickedly. “I could set him free in here any time you decided to destroy my furniture, young man.”

Sherlock hadn't opened his mouth to reply before John kicked him in anticipation of anything he might say in response to this.

"Thank you, Mrs Hudson," he said calmly, instead.

"Got to run," she said, nodding her head towards the door, "there's baking in the oven. Bring you up some scones a bit later."

John looked between their landlady's retreating back, the cage on the floor and his flushed and crumpled flatmate on the floor.

"Would you mind if we just went to the zoo next time?"


End file.
